Listen to selections from the 1975 soundtrack “Histoire d’O” by Pierre Bachelet (CAM, Italy).

Almost percussionless (is that a word?), relying heavily on muted strings, electric pianos and wordless female moaning, Bachelet’s soundtrack to this French skin-flick is a hypnotic, narcotic tour de force, composed the year after he finished the score for “Emmanuelle”. What a smutty stoat.

Directed in 1975 by Just Jaeckin (joking?), the movie is based on the 1954 erotic novel by writer and journalist Anne Desclos (by all accounts a demure bourgeois intellectual), who was moved to put a very dirty pen to paper by her husband’s assertion that a woman could never write a truly convincing story of unfettered, wanton sexual desire. She must have proved him wrong judging by the ensuing furore that resulted in legal challenges, prosecutions and sales restrictions.

Briefly, the story is that of a woman, Odile, who willingly succumbs to being trained by her lover as a sexual submissive to the point of enslavement. O, as she becomes known, is then given away to said lover’s half brother, pierced, branded, blindfolded and shackled, to be used by him and his friends as they please. Nice.

The film is probably less graphic, but if you want to play it safe in the comfort of your own home, with children running this way and that, I would recommend just listening to the music.